


red spills into one's heart

by darlingargents



Category: IT (1990)
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Post-Canon, Resurrection, Rituals, Sharing a Bed, creepy forests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22982758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/pseuds/darlingargents
Summary: There's always a way.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 6
Kudos: 75
Collections: Writing Rainbow Red





	red spills into one's heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reeby10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeby10/gifts).



> Title from Winter by Sudeep Sen.

Whenever Richie tries to remember his childhood — all the memories that vanished into thin air as soon as Derry was behind him — he thinks of Eddie as small. Short and blond and always a little bit angrier than he should be, in a way that always made him laugh.

The body in his arms now is not small. They’re both adults now, and his knees are buckling under the weight. Ben helps him, trying in vain to support Richie’s arms, but he holds Eddie too close to his chest for Ben to get a grip; he’s afraid that if Ben takes the weight, somehow, Eddie will fall. It’s on him, and him alone, to take Eddie back out of the earth.

Bill is struggling with Audra in his arms, just behind, and Bev is helping; Audra is smaller and lighter, and their task is somewhat easier. Richie’s arms nearly give out, and Ben wordlessly adjusts Eddie so that they’re both taking the weight. The cold water runs around their ankles, and they walk on.

* * *

Eddie is dead. That much is clear from the moment they get aboveground and Richie lays his body on the grass by the water. It’s raining and windy and the raindrops fall into Eddie’s unmoving eyes. Richie looks down at him, and thinks about the horrifying magic of Derry, the creatures in the woods that always scared him so much.

It’s almost too easy to decide that he’s going to fix it.

* * *

He’s never been one for book research, so he asks Mike for help.

“If there were a way to raise people from the dead, everyone would be doing it,” Mike says. He’s still in his hospital bed, surrounded by beeping monitors. Where Eddie should be right now, instead of wrapped in sheets in Richie’s car.

“We’re not everyone. We’re the goddamn Losers, we killed the clown, and I want my reimbursement. I’m bringing him back.”

Mike just looks at him. The insistent beeping of his heart monitor stays steady, and Mike looks exhausted and sad and far older than his years. (Richie’s probably the same, at this point. He’s put on some gray hairs.)

“Tell me where to go,” Richie says.

And Mike does.

* * *

The Barrens are full of memories, of rock wars and sunlit days with his friends, of being eleven and scared of werewolves. This time, Richie is strong enough to carry Eddie down there by himself. The sun rises on his back as he stumbles his way down the paths between trees and shrubs.

He has a shovel, and when he finds the spot — a tree where lovers were hanged, according to Mike’s research — he starts to dig. He talks aloud as he does so, to Eddie. Tells him about his life, about all the things they’ll do together back in LA.

“Spaghetti-man, the ocean is so much nicer there,” he says as he strips off his shirt and tosses it aside. It’s cloudy, but still hot, even under the trees. He picks up the shovel and digs it into the dirt once again. “You can swim all year round. And it’s a whole lot prettier. And the girls on the beaches — you’ll love that.” He pauses. “Well, maybe not. And maybe I won’t, either. You’re much prettier.” His heart jumps into his throat. It’s something he’s been thinking, on and off, since he returned to Derry, but it’s the first time he’s fully articulated it.

Eddie doesn’t answer. He’s still wrapped in stolen hotel sheets.

“No thanks for the compliment, buddy? Okay, I get it. Maybe I should be a better friend and not talk about that. But I’m bringing you back to life, so — I can say it. You’re real pretty, Eds. I can’t wait to see you again.”

Maybe he’s going insane, he thinks as he digs. Just maybe.

* * *

When the sun is high past noon and the hole is deep enough, he maneuvers Eddie into it, rolling and picking up his feet to adjust and rolling again. Eddie drops three or so feet into the bottom with a puff of dust, and Richie begins the faster process of refilling the hole. He starts at Eddie’s feet, and works his way up. When he gets to the head, he pauses.

“See you soon, buddy.”

He can’t feel it through the cloth, but he awkwardly pats the place where Eddie’s hair probably is, and drops another shovelful of dirt on him, covering up the white (now very dirt-and-grass stained) sheet.

He keeps shovelling until there’s a neat little mound of dirt, and then he smooths it out with his shovel, and then he sits under the tree, and waits.

As the sun moves through the sky, Richie swears the trees are watching him. The leaves flutter in the slight wind, a few of them leaping off the ground and landing on Richie’s shoes. When he looks down, a vine has wrapped around his wrist, pulling his hand towards the ground.

He pulls his hand loose with a wince of pain, and looks at the red marks around his wrist, angry and bruised. A trickle of blood runs from a tiny cut.

It must be this place fighting back. He wipes the blood on his dirt-covered pants and kicks the vine away with his foot. “Fuck you,” he says to no one in particular.

He hopes that means that Eddie will be waking up soon, just as he’s supposed to.

* * *

Richie ends up dozing off against the tree, and jerks suddenly awake hours later. It’s dark, and a glance at his watch tells him it’s just past eleven at night. A few more vines have wrapped hungrily around his ankles, and he kicks himself free and stands up.

It’s supposed to happen at midnight. Not long now.

He contents himself with pacing in circles around the temporary grave, checking his watch every few minutes. Time seems to stretch out around him. The vines try to attack his feet, weakly, and he brushes up against a fern and has to jerk away when it tries to wrap around his hand. The forest is not happy about this.

Richie hopes that it’ll let them both go anyway.

When he checks his watch at 11:59, his heart rate speeds up. He watches the second hand sweep agonizingly slowly around the watch face, and slowly, ever so slowly, tick past midnight.

A choked-off scream emanates from the earth, and the pile of fresh dirt trembles like there’s something moving underneath. Richie grabs his shovel, hands sweaty and slipping on the handle, and starts to dig, carefully.

It takes maybe a minute to uncover the first part of the sheet-wrapped body, which is thrashing desperately under the dirt. He tosses the shovel aside and digs with his hands, throwing chunks of dirt all around, covering himself in a layer of grime. When he can, he reaches for the end of the sheet and unwraps it.

And there’s Eddie, all signs of decomposition entirely gone, dirt-streaked and bloody, and furious-looking.

“Richie, what did you _do_ to me?” he asks, sounding terrified. “Why was I underground — was I buried alive?”

“It’s a long story, Eds,” Richie says, and can’t help but laugh into his hands. Eddie is here, and he looks okay and alive and — he did it. He actually did it. “I’ll help you, come on.”

* * *

They stumble their way back to Richie’s Town House room by two in the morning. Eddie is entirely uninjured, but apparently starving. There’s nothing open in town, but Richie gives him half a sandwich from his room minifridge, and he scarfs it down like he’s never seen food before.

He insists on a shower before Richie can offer it to him, so while he washes off the grave-dirt, Richie strips down to his underwear and finds a bigger shirt in his suitcase to wear while he waits. When Eddie gets out, clean and healthy and so, so alive, Richie can’t stop himself from getting up and wrapping him in a choking hug.

“Richie, you’re covered in dirt,” Eddie says, sounding only half as disapproving as he probably should, and Richie laughs half-hysterically.

“Sorry. I’m glad you’re back, man.” He pushes past Eddie and closes the bathroom door, turning the shower up to full heat immediately.

When he gets out of his overly-long shower, Eddie is sitting on the room’s only bed, dressed in his own silk pajamas. (Richie may have snuck into his room to get his things. He figured Eddie would want them.) He looks nervous, and for the first time since he pulled Eddie back out of the ground, Richie feels a little uneasy.

“I can sleep on the floor,” Eddie offers weakly, and Richie shakes his head.

“Nope, the formerly dead man obviously gets first dibs.” Eddie winces. “I can, but frankly, I think we’d both be happier if we didn’t have to deal with a sleep-deprived Tozier in the morning. Wanna share? We can pretend we’re eleven again and having a sleepover, braid each other’s hair and everything.”

“Fine,” Eddie says, colour high in his cheeks, and gets into the bed. “Turn off the light, will you?”

Richie climbs in as Eddie arranges himself on his side, facing away, and turns off the light. There’s a moment of quiet breathing as they arrange themselves and get comfortable. And then Eddie speaks, quietly, so quietly that Richie almost doesn’t hear him.

“How did I die?”

Richie’s breath catches in his throat. He closes his eyes and opens them.

He owes this to Eddie — he owes him honesty. He brought him back to life, and he owes him that.

“Pennywise killed you. And then we killed him. And I brought you back.”

Eddie is quiet for a long moment. And then: “I don’t know where I was. But I thought that I got sick. That I did something wrong and I was being punished.”

“No,” Richie says, softly, and then a little louder, more forcefully. “No, Eddie. You didn’t. You were brave and you tried to save us. You did the right thing.”

“Thank you,” Eddie says. “For everything.”

“Anytime, Spaghetti-man,” Richie says. “Now let’s both get some beauty sleep. Not that either of us need it.”

Eddie snickers, and they both go quiet. And then Eddie rolls over, and Richie feels a hand in his, giving a gentle squeeze. He smiles in the dark, and squeezes back.

Richie falls asleep quickly, and doesn’t wake up until morning.

* * *

It turns out, quite quickly, that Eddie’s resurrection didn’t come without side effects.

He’s hungrier than Richie has ever seen anyone be. When they wake up at noon, Richie is immediately dragged to the closest diner and gets to watch Eddie demolish about six plates of food. He slowly eats a piece of toast with peanut butter as Eddie dunks his fifth pancake in syrup and eats it in two bites, and wonders if this is going to continue. (If so, he’ll need to take a few more movie jobs to pay for it.)

He’s also noticeably weaker. Not to the point of any serious problems, but he walks slower, coughs more, holds Richie’s arm more than expected. (That one, he thinks, might just be friendly. Or more than friendly, maybe.)

In the late afternoon, Richie tracks down the others. None of them have left town yet, luckily. He calls them all into a meeting at the library that evening, and goes to fetch Mike himself after dropping Eddie off.

“What’s this about?” Mike asks warily as Richie sweet-talks the nurse into releasing Mike for the day. “Some crazy scheme?”

“You’ll see,” Richie says, and guides Mike to the elevator.

Beverly and Ben are outside the library, holding hands, and Bill is there too, looking at his watch nervously. They all look at him when he pulls up and helps Mike walk up to the doors.

“What’s going on, Richie?” Beverly asks.

“I did the right thing,” Richie says, and leads them in, and there’s Eddie, sitting on Mike’s desk and flipping through the pages of a random book. Beverly lets out a little shriek and runs to hug him tight to her chest, rocking back and forth as Eddie flails a little under her embrace. The others are slower, but they all surround him in awe. All but Mike.

“You did it,” Mike says quietly. “No side effects?”

“Nothing serious.”

He pauses for a moment, and then says, “If it hadn’t worked, you’d know by now. You got lucky.”

“Trust me, Mikey, I’m not planning on pushing that luck.”

Mike smiles at him, and slowly walks over to clap Eddie on the back and talk to him.

The Losers Club disbands for likely the last time an hour or so later, and Richie drives Mike back to the hospital and Eddie back to the Town House for the night. They grab another snack and head back up to the room. Eddie’s checked out of his own room, and they don’t talk about it this time. They take turns showering, and Richie turns off the light after he climbs into bed next to Eddie. They sit in the dark, breathing quietly, and Richie speaks.

“Come back to LA with me, Eds?”

Eddie lets out a breath, and before Richie has a chance to worry, there’s a hand on his chest and Eddie’s lips brushing against his. He holds his breath, half afraid and half impossibly happy.

“Yes,” Eddie says, and Richie leans up to give him a real kiss. He smiles into it, too happy to stop himself.

They’re going home, together, and everything’s going to be okay.


End file.
